Contrary to what your mother may have told you, you can get a PhD in Batman. Kingston University's Will Brooker tells all about comic book academia.
JEFF RUBIN: I never got a PhD, so I don’t totally understand the process. Along the way, was
there someone you had to go to and say, “Just so you know, I’m going to be writing my thesis on Batman”?
WILL BROOKER: Yeah, there sure is. What happens is you have to find yourself a supervisor who is an expert in the area you want to study. There are quite a lot of checks and balances. My PhD was just as rigorous as someone doing a PhD on something more traditional.
JR: So writing a paper on Batman is just as much work as writing a paper on the Iliad. Why is that? Is it because there’s just so much more Batman? There’s only one volume of the Iliad, but there’s essentially an infinite amount of Batman out there.
WB: The challenge isn’t “Can you read every word that Shakespeare ever wrote?” and it’s the same with Batman. It’s not like a pop quiz where someone’s going to ask you a detail of something that happened in 1943.
JR: So when you say, “I’m writing about Batman,” which Batman are you writing about?
Miss Cellania's Blog Posts
The Oscar for Best Cinematography goes to whichever movie was judged to have displayed the best camera work over the preceding year. To show us what kind of movies the Academy likes for this award, Burger Fiction put together a supercut of all the winners from 1929 to 2016, plus the nominees for this year's Academy Awards. I would bet you've seen most all of them.
There's a list of the all the movies used in this video here, along with the names of the cinematographers.
The Galactic Empire constructed an operational space station in orbit and armed it with weapons capable of destroying planets. Twice. They weren't the only ones to conceive of such an idea. And although weaponized satellites built on earth wouldn't be quite that powerful, they are way more terrifying, because those plans are real. The first one was found in the confiscated archives of Nazi Germany. A Life magazine article from 1945 told of the German concept of an orbital base, armed with a "sun gun."
But the war brought a new idea to the table: Make a space station, put it at a lower orbit, and arm it with a giant mirror “to burn an enemy city to ashes or boil part of an ocean.” The station would be manned with a crew that, when not aiming the giant mirror
like a bully frying ants, would instead tend to pumpkin gardens.
The biggest obstacle for such a plan, the magazine claimed, was that no heavy rocket existed that could ferry the parts into orbit. “If the modern German scientists had been able to make such a rocket, they may have been able to set up their sun gun,” the article notes. “Whether the sun gun would have accomplished what they expected, however, is another matter.”
Modern German scientists were eventually able to make those powerful rockets -for the United States. The US and the Soviet Union also had their own plans for putting weapons of mass destruction into orbit, although they were written quite a bit later. Read about the proposed programs at Popular Mechanics. -via Digg
The second episode of the new Mental Floss video series Scatterbrained is all about Valentines Day. Learn quick facts about the history of the holiday, all about traditional Valentine candy, other holidays celebrating romance around the world, advice on buying and selling a diamond ring, and the mating habits of animals. This is just what you need when you're sitting at home alone at your computer on Valentines Day. May you someday know a relationship as good as that of the shingleback skink.
Forgive me for not recognizing the character being recognized here, but I'm not really up on Marvel characters. I'm pretty sure this is Natalia Romanoff, otherwise known as Black Widow, a founding member of The Avengers. This comic from Dorkly is an update of a similar comic from three years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Black Widow has become the Rodney Dangerfield of comic book superheroes. -via Geeks Are Sexy
As you can see from this chart, the events of the Winter Games have widely varying energy requirements. Cross country skiers have a long way to go without the aid of gravity. Yeah, cross country skiing has hills, but you have to go up as much as down. They also have to battle hypothermia in their time-consuming races. But other sports mean cutting back on food, beieve it or not.
Ski jumpers, for example, are at the very low end of the spectrum, eating as little as 1,300 calories per day.
“They come from a large height, come down, and fly as far as they can, so they have to weigh extremely light. The lighter you are, you fly farther,” said Susie Parker Simmons, one of two senior sports nutritionists with the United States Olympic Committee.
These men and women typically weigh up to 10 or more pounds less in the days before competition compared to their typical bodyweight, so that means restricting their calories to eat even less than their bodies might burn. Ditto for figure skaters, who need to ensure they’re light and agile enough to jump and glide across the ice.
Events also differ in the type of diet they require: protein or carbs? Find out what Olympics athletes eat to prepare for the Winter Games at Vox. -via Digg
(Image credit: Christina Animashaun/Vox)
In 1939, the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, erected a huge brick incinerator to dispose of the city's trash. It was only in operation for a year before they passed an ordinance prohibiting trash burning within the city limits. So the building was abandoned, unused for decades. Nature took over, until the building was barely visible. In 1979, artist Ron Fleming discovered it.
Fleming spent several months trying to persuade city officials to auction the building, and they finally did a year later -- without notifying Fleming.
"They only received one bid from a man who put in $500 just to tear it down for the bricks," he said.
Fortunately, Fleming was able to persuade the city to reject the bid and auction the building again in 1981. This time, he won with a $5,400 bid.
"I took a shot in the dark on the price," he said. "I had no idea what it was worth."
Fleming and his wife went to work making the incinerator a home and a glorious piece of art. The building, now on the historical register, has plenty of light, open spaces, and modern amenities, while still retaining its historical quirkiness. After his wife died, Fleming decided to sell his masterpiece. The Incinerator House can be yours for $275,000. See a gallery of images at the real estate listing. It has four stories, 14 rooms, three bedrooms and three bathrooms. And look at the size of those chimneys! -Thanks, hearsetrax!
The 1998 comedy Half Baked starred Dave Chappelle, Jim Breuer, Harland Williams, and Guillermo Díaz as roommates who spend all their free time getting high. One of them is jailed for unwittingly killing a police horse, and the rest scheme to raise his bail, which leads to comedy shenanigans. Critics panned the film, but Half Baked sold enough tickets to more than double its production budget, and has grown into a cult favorite twenty years later. There's more to learn about Half Baked.
10. Dave Chapelle wasn’t happy with the final cut.
He stated that the version that he helped to write was a lot funnier and that what came out was more like a weed movie for kids.
9. From the time the script was bought to when the film was released was only seven months.That’s a very short amount of time which means that filming had to have been going fairly quickly.
You'll want to check out more trivia about Half Baked at TVOM.
LEGO Ideas is staging a contest called LEGO Moments in Space. The competition is closed for entries now, but you can vote for your favorite. Mark Smiley built a coin-operated rocket ride for his entry. Cute, huh? But then a commenter noticed the resemblance to a scene in the movie a Deadpool video game.
Smiley switched out the rider and now has a tribute to Deadpool in LEGO. The entire project now has a completely different flavor!
If only he'd thought of this before submitting his entry! -Thanks, Mark!
You may be amazed at how it's possible to ship a package and have it arrive anywhere in the world overnight (for a premium price), but you'll be even more amazed when you see how it's done. FedEx, UPS, and DHL have overnight shipping down to an art. After watching this, I can understand why UPS will pay your college tuition if you work the third shift at their sorting facilities.
The sheer volume of packages sent through the three major carriers is staggering, but the system has evolved to get it done. Wendover Productions can take a simple question, go deep into the details, and managed to make even the driest subjects fascinating.
Was young Luke Skywalker a freeloader or a selfless hero? In a point/counterpoint argument, Mike Ryan lays out the argument that while Han Solo owned his ship, no matter how he acquired it, Luke took advantage of the Rebel Alliance in using an X-wing or two as his own personal conveyance.
In The Empire Strikes Back – after Luke destroys his snowspeeder and even gets poor Dak killed – instead of heading off with the rest of the Rebel Alliance to the designated meeting point after the evacuation of Hoth, without telling anyone Luke decides to take his Alliance issued X-Wing to Dagobah instead. And then he crashes it into a swamp. Now, look, I know what you’re thinking, Um, Luke is a hero, I bet he gets some leeway. So, try this out: the next time you land some big account at work, or really come through in the clutch that results in your company profiting in some kind of way, go take one of your work’s company cars without asking and drive it into a swamp and see what happens. There is no way your boss will say, “Well, Johnson over there did land the Dubois account, I guess we can let this whole thing about the company car and the swamp go.”
But there's another way to look at it. Commenter DarthBile laid out a counter-argument and refuted each point of Ryan's position.
Finally, we have to understand that there was a reward given to both Han and Luke for saving Princess Leia. We see Han loading up the Falcon with supplies and credits to go pay of Jabba the Hutt. My guess is that Luke was offered the same for saving Leia’s life. Maybe he declined the reward in lieu of personal use of an X-Wing? He could have easily entered into a contract with the Alliance for all sorts of privileges. The possibilities are, well, more than you can imagine!
He also goes into the inheritance Luke could have pursued, if he had chosen to, including Padme's family holdings on Naboo and Darth Vader's accumulated fortune, as well as his uncle's farm. What's an X-wing (or two) compared to all that? Read the rest of the musings on Luke's finances at Uproxx.
It was the murder of the century in Iceland -but not a recent century. In March of 1828, Agnes Magnúsdóttir alerted the neighbors that the farmhouse where she worked, called Illugastaðir, was on fire.
When the rescuers arrived and extinguished the blaze, the scene was even worse than they expected. Inside, they discovered the bodies of Natan Ketilsson, the farm’s owner, and his guest, Pétur Jónsson. Though the two were badly burned, the rescuers could see it wasn't the fire that had caused their deaths: They'd been murdered. The men had been stabbed 12 times and bludgeoned with a hammer before the fire had been set with shark oil.
The authorities quickly arrested both Agnes and Illugastaðir’s other maid, Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir, as well as a young man named Friðrik Sigurdsson. Although the trio's motives were murky, local gossips suspected the crime had something to do with their romantic entanglements.
"Entanglements" was the word. Agnes was in love with Natan, who loved a married woman in a lengthy and public affair. But Natan also slept with 15-year-old Sigríður, which made Agnes jealous, and who knows what Friðrik thought of all that. Anyway, the case ended with two beheadings, which were the last executions in Iceland. All these years later, there are still many questions surrounding the murders that will never be answered. Read the story as we know it at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Ragnachar)
Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen. Visit Eddie at his website or at Facebook.
Jerry Lewis had just wrapped up filming his latest movie Cinderfella in December of 1959. Everything was fine and dandy until Paramount executives informed Jerry that they wanted Cinderfella to be Jerry's annual summer release. Jerry disagreed and wanted Cinderfella, a fantasy film based on Jerry Lewis playing a male version of cinderella, to be put on hold. Jerry figured Cinderfella was more a film for the holiday season and wanted it released at Christmas time.
Fair enough, said Paramount, but we still will need our Jerry Lewis summer film to placate the kids who are out of school. Jerry promised Paramount head Barney Balaban that he would deliver a replacement film for Cinderfella, a film that would be all ready for the kiddies to view during the summer months.
Jerry was performing at the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami at the time. While performing two shows a night, Jerry still managed to churn out a whopper of a script. The original script, which Jerry called The Bellboy, was 165 pages (enough for a two hour movie). It took Jerry eight days to write.
The filming would take place while Jerry was performing his two shows nightly at the Fontainbleu. Jerry (God only knows how) would perform nightly and shoot The Bellboy during the daytime hours. No word on just how he managed to get sleep, or how much sleep Jerry got, during this must-have-been-hectic period.
Perhaps to cut costs, or maybe because of the time factor, most of the other actors in the film were actually performers who happened to be appearing in Miami at the same time as Jerry. The Bellboy began production on February 8, 1960.
Dami Lee has Olympic fever! Let this be a lesson to you: don't order your prom (or other dressy occasion) dress until the winter Olympics are well over. Seeing how pretty figure skaters can be in sparkles and Spandex will give you illusions you won't be able to shake for a week or so. And prom pictures can last a lifetime ...especially on the internet! The comic is from Dami Lee at As Per Usual.
Holy cow, that's wasteful! The latest "pictofacts" post at Cracked tackles weird spending habits. Many of them have huge totals for what we spend money on, possibly because so many people are buying something. After all, there are 350 million Americans. But not all the facts are about Americans.
What's so weird about that? Clothing costs more over there, and Europeans aren't expected to spend money on their health, it's a government benefit. What's weird is how much Americans spend on health care. See all twenty submitted facts at Cracked.